It was Woodinville’s best season in many years, with a 7-1 record in dual meets, and 14 girls sent to the State tourney.

For senior Dominique Yoder, it was a season of personal bests and accolades from her coach.

Yoder repeatedly broke the school record in the 100 Meter Breaststroke, and also finished 6th at State.

"Dominique has some serious talent and broke the Woodinville breast stroke record that went back to 1990," Falcons coach Annie Price said. "She shattered it. She’s a huge talent. She really helped carry the team."

Yoder, who turns 18 this month, has been swimming competitively since she was 8 years old.

"When I was little I used to spend a lot of time at my grandma’s house," Yoder said. "She lived right next to the neighborhood pool, so she always took me swimming every day after pre-school and every day after elementary school. So I was the fish in the family!"

Ten years later, heading into her senior season at Woodinville, she wasn’t sure how it would go.

"I knew that we had good handful of girls on our team this year, and I was excited of course," Yoder said. "I was excited to see what we could do with our relay team, with myself, Katie Davidson, Abby Webb and Taylor Bingea."

When it was all said and done, Woodinville finished with a 7-1 record in dual meets and ended up 19th at State. Yoder finished 6th at State and performed remarkably during the season.

"From last year, I dropped over 8 seconds in my best event, which is a huge chunk of time," Yoder said. "This whole entire year I’ve been chasing after the 100 Breast Stroke, which is the one I really wanted to make State in. I have been chasing a 1:10 (one minute and ten seconds), and I was so close throughout several of the meets. Then we got to the KingCo meet I was finally like, ‘Okay, I need to do this!’ So the biggest moment for me was breaking the 1:10, breaking the 1:08, and then finding out the next morning that I had broken the school record (with a time of 1:06.46).

"That was huge for me, just knowing that I finally accomplished that goal," she said. "It was something that I wanted for so long. And it was huge for my family and all my friends and teammates, because they knew how badly I wanted it and worked for it.

"And overall we almost went undefeated and everybody improved so much on the team this year. We took so many girls to State. The whole season was awesome."

With graduation now on the horizon, Yoder’s future plans seem centered upon San Jose State University, although she hasn’t yet verbally committed.

"I’m actually looking at a bunch of colleges and actually got recruited to go swim for the Division I college where my parents met," she said. "So I’m really excited about that. I’m going to continue swimming in college and see where it goes from there."

See more sports stories on pages 8 and 12.

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